MARK LEMMERICK: LEVENE ALUMNUS

Mark Lemmerick had been working in executive positions for years when he enrolled in the Levene School of Business’ Executive MBA program. For him, the graduate school offered a chance to examine and evaluate what he was already doing. “It was a great way to go back and look at what I was doing through a different lens, and it was interesting to work with people at different levels of experience in a different setting.” There was one other reason: born and raised in Regina, Lemmerick had begun an administration degree at the U of R, but never completed it. “I wanted to complete my University education,” he says. “It was on my list.” Though he’d taken numerous development courses over the years, the business school offered him an opportunity to study and learn “in a very focused way.” After beginning his postuniversity career in a highly specialized technical/medical field, he joined his friend Mark MacLeod to start up a computer services company, Software 2000 Inc. After System House bought it eight years later, he stayed on for a couple of years, then did a bit of consulting before rejoining MacLeod at Information Services Corporation, where MacLeod was Chief Executive Officer and Lemmerick Chief Operating Officer. After three and half years, Lemmerick then spent a couple of years as CEO of a trucking logistics company, helping to turn it around so the owners could divest. As that wound down he enrolled in the Levene School of Business, graduating in May 2008. His cohort of 39 was the first to pass through the Executive MBA program, and is still the largest to have done so. Three years spent developing a resort development, Sun Dale, was followed by a year with the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority to help improve their warehouse distribution system, after which he was hired by the Global Transportation Hub Authority to put in management systems and to develop and help operationalize their legislation. Then, three years ago, MacLeod and Lemmerick, reprising their roles from Software 2000 and ISC, joined ISM Canada, a computer services company (a division of IBM), born in Saskatchewan in 1973, that today operates in all four western provinces. Because of the rapid pace of change in the industry, “this was a company in need of transformation,” Lemmerick says. “Mark was brought in to help the company transition out of some of the more traditional computer services into things like data analytics and cloud-based computing.” Looking back, Lemmerick says the Levene Executive MBA program made him a better critical thinker — but most valuable of all were the connections he formed with his fellow students. “Learning from each other is as important in a program like that as it is learning from the lecture-based case study format of the courses.” What’s next in Lemmerick’s career? He isn’t looking down the road. “I’m here, and it’s meaningful work that’s important,” he says. “I’m excited about where I am and I love what I do and most importantly who I work with. Who knows what’s next?”